Sopron

Sopron (shôˈprôn) [key], Ger. Ödenburg, city (1991 est. pop. 55,140), NW Hungary, near the Austrian border. It is a tourism and commercial center with fruit-preserving, sugar-refining, and cotton textile industries. Originally a Celtic settlement called Scarabantia, it became a military outpost under the Romans. Hungarians settling the area in the 10th and 11th cent. made the city an important fortress. Sopron was the site of the coronation of King (later emperor) Ferdinand III of Hungary and Bohemia in 1625 and a meeting place of the Hungarian Parliament in 1681. Part of the Burgenland, it was transferred to Austria after World War I but was returned to Hungary after a plebiscite (1921). Sopron is one of the oldest cultural centers in Hungary; it has a university, three 13th-century churches, and a 15th-century palace. Franz Liszt was born at nearby Dobojan.